There has been a growing awareness that the issue of labour market disadvantage is
substantially greater than merely considering unemployment and the ability to fi nd
a job. There is an increasing literature that points to the advantages of considering
a broader concept which accounts not only for those people who are traditionally
unemployed, but also for individuals who are underemployed and those who are
sub-unemployed or discouraged workers. Taking multidimensional survey and census
data for Australian metropolitan regions, this paper applies a broad employability
framework to an understanding of labour underutilisation which presents the risk of
underutilisation as a function of individual characteristics, personal circumstances
and the impact of local labour market characteristics. The analysis fi nds that the risk
of labour underutilisation is associated with a range of individual characteristics and
personal circumstances together with the characteristics of the metropolitan local
labour market.